When Chemicals React
by chemiglee
Summary: When chemicals react, it's a thing of beauty. It's like nothing else. Written for Klaine Hiatus Madness Week 2013 on Tumblr. There is some chemistry talk here, but it's all a metaphor and such.


**A/N: I do not own Glee.**

I

At the winter mixer, Kurt felt two emotions fighting for control of his stomach.

One, he was where he should be, and chemistry was his center stage. Chemistry was a beautiful science; it explained stars and plants and the human body and shit and the simple magic of how salt and sugar could dissolve in water and oil could not. It told him why diamond could cut glass. It talked to him that time when his dad's barbecue grill had caught fire and he had dived for the fire extinguisher instead of water. If light was the universe, chemistry was the prism that broke it up and distilled it down into knowledge he could use, and even these parts were beautiful. Chromate is yellow, but add acid to a solution of it in a test tube and it will turn orange as the dichromate forms. Trimethyl borate glows a swampy green when thrust into a hot Bunsen burner blue flame. Porphyrin is a gorgeous purple, the color of royal cloaks in rich Regency era paintings. Chemistry, to Kurt, is the universe's paintbrush, and it's also the paint.

(And it's his research. His own research project. No directions, just questions; _his_ questions, and he'd tinkered and poked at them the previous fall, and he would again this winter, until truth burst out at the seams. And he admitted to himself, too, that the thought of "K. Hummel" as author of a real, published research paper or as the lead speaker in a symposium thrilled him immensely.)

Undergrad had been so boring, mostly because he'd had to humdrum his way through prescribed cookbook exercises. He'd have to revisit those labs again, since he was in charge of a couple of lab sections again this semester. Maybe he could make them more interesting for his students. It was how he was paid. It was a job Kurt ended up liking, and he hoped that the students (maybe) could understand what a miracle chemistry was, because of his teaching.

One of the snack tables was very conveniently located near the door. Kurt was navigating a solo cup filled with wine and a plate of fruit and half-listening to a lilting accented ramble about mass spectrometry when a hand brushed over his to reach over and grab the tongs for the cheese. It was a very warm, deferential, smooth-looking hand. His wrists were faintly hairy.

Kurt wondered what he would be like to stroke that wrist. Kurt might have stared at that hand and wrist and that face in profile more than once in class or across or next to him at the lab bench and he just might have had to start his procedures over a few times. More than a few times. Thank goodness for gloves, because chemicals can be corrosive. But goggles, while they were great for safety protection, didn't let you see their eyes so well.

"Oops, sorry," Blaine said cheerfully. "It sounds like the UN here, doesn't it, Kurt?"

When hot blood fills the capillaries in the face, they expand and you blush. Kurt blushed.

And here was number two: Blaine. He was cute. And he was _smart_. He and Kurt had the same perfect GPA. He argued with him at the lunchtime meetings: why didn't you try this instead? Or do this step first? He was the only one in that group who seemed to actually understand what Kurt was trying to do, that he was trying to dissect the universe and figure out how it all fit. The first time it had happened, Kurt had been annoyed, but Blaine had turned out to have a mind as incisive as his, even if it seemed like he was more fascinated with what lay between things rather than the things themselves. Everyone loved him though: their freshmen students, who actually fought to have him check over their data, the other grad students, and the grumpy professors, who handled all of his questions with not-quite-concealed admiration. And, most charming of all: he sang as he worked.

(Two souls had sat alone, late at night, hunched over the lab bench. The first time he'd done it, after Kurt had haltingly said _yes, you can put on some Pandora_, he'd winged his way like a bird to Katy Perry and sung Teenage Dream with a micropipetter for a microphone; so mellow-voiced, so confident, and that happy, peppy sound, _you and I will be young forever_, had filled the room while Kurt sat, stunned into silence, while solvent dripped out onto the floor in a vaporous pool. They'd cleaned up the mess later, and that was when Animal by the Neon Trees had come on and they had both sang their hearts out and bounced - well, gingerly - around the lab table and out, dancing like goofs, into the empty, echoing hallway. Afterwards, Blaine had told him, with a little flirty wink, _Kurt, you've got an amazing voice. You should sing with me more often. _Kurt's heart had skipped more than half a beat, which was so illogical - but true.)

Blaine was delightful. _And he was cute_. _And Kurt, your thoughts get rambly when you think about him. _

"Yes… yes! It does, but you get used to it. I like the international atmosphere here."

"I love it that we have the world here at school. So, how's your research going?" Blaine popped a porphyrin-purple grape into his mouth, between plush, soft-looking, sweet-looking lips, and looked at Kurt expectantly with honey-green-goldish miasmas for eyes. Kurt had actually tried, in rare fits of procrastination, to quantify them in terms of color, as in: what chemicals would they be like? And he had literally come up with nothing, nothing in the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics could help him figure this out. Kurt held onto that thought, the mystery of Blaine and his mysterious eyes, while his mouth opened and nothing came out and he stared and Blaine… was actually staring back and wow, he might never wear goggles again if it meant he could actually look into eyes like that (and maybe the solvents would put his own eyes out but _wow, oh wow_).

"Boys!" Dr. Petrie called out as he ambled out of the room, "Blaine! Kurt! Don't forget you have to rewrite those freshman labs for me. They're due the day after tomorrow!"

"Yes! Yes! We won't forget!" Blaine waved Dr. Petrie off cheerily, and turned to Kurt as if they hadn't just had a wonderful, soul-absorbing moment that Kurt swore to himself he'd never forget. "You're not drunk, are you?"

Kurt blinked. "Why, are you?"

"Well, if you're not busy, we can go work on this now. I hate procrastinating, and if we can churn through it we can sing more songs. Come to my apartment and we'll work on it some and then we can get paid, because I so need this money."

"I don't have my notes with me, but I'm sure your notes are just as good as mine." _Shit, that was so arrogant._

But Kurt's stomach just did flipflops while Blaine shot back, grinning so the light touched his eyes and turned them to gold: "I like a man with confidence. They are, in case you were wondering. And I am, in case you're wondering."

"Anyone who wears a striped bowtie and sweater vests might not get that question as often as he thinks he does." And Kurt just had to, so he did it; he reached out under Blaine's perfectly smooth chin and tweaked the edges of the bowtie, a smile slowly spreading, shyly, over his face. There was a soft hitch of breath. Kurt didn't know who did it, him or Blaine, but maybe it didn't matter.

Blaine flicked his tongue over his lips, but his quip was dead-on. "Anyone who wears a duck pin and designer loafers never gets that question, I'm sure."

Kurt snorted. "I'm a _fabulous_ chemist. And the loafers protect my toes."

"Well, come on, your toes are safe in my apartment. Let's go get this done. Let's go to work."

II

They'd been silent on the drive over, except that he'd had to put his hand to Kurt's chest to keep him from catapulting forward after stopping too abruptly at a red light. He'd been preoccupied. Under his tight pinstriped black vest and purple shirt, Blaine had felt heat and light there, swirling under his palm.

Kurt was a pillar of fire, pale and hot, and Blaine gulped, because this was incredibly awkward just asking who was basically a perfect guy out to what was going to be just working when he _really_ wanted it to be a date, when he could explore that heat and light for himself - carefully first, see if they match up, see if they have interests and lives that work together, because something about Kurt fascinated him, something he instinctively knew the first time he met him. It was the laser-like focus he brought to everything, that passion, that drive: Kurt's relentless pursuit for beauty in all forms, fashion, art, math, chemistry, everything. He used it to separate the sections of a problem, any problem, and he could articulate about each of them and why you did this first, second, third, and when you could replace one step with another, or why you absolutely could not skip this third step at all.

There had been suave, sophisticated boys, all through undergrad, but in the end, they hadn't clicked. Nothing had held them together. What had fascinated Blaine about chemistry was that it was all about the forces and interactions that held atoms together, too, the relationships - how they got together, what held them together forever, what broke them apart in a burst of heat - yes, heat and light, the same as what had flared up when he'd touched Kurt.

Kurt was passionate, too, and you could feel it in everything he did, everything he said, everything he wore, but Kurt was most definitely not Sebastian. Blaine understood everything Kurt talked about when they got together for lunchtime meetings, and he argued with Kurt, too, and Kurt argued with him about his own work. But he liked that Kurt could both defend himself and yield, whereas they would get into a proud huff about everything even if they were uncategorically wrong. Kurt was proud, too, but he had every right to be. Kurt was smart. _And cute. Very cute_.

So there they were, with notes spread out all over Blaine's living room, and bottles of water for sipping. Sam, Artie, and Tina were all out, Blaine explained carefully, so the place would be theirs for the night. Kurt stretched out on the floor on his stomach to read some of Blaine's notes, and Blaine leaned against the shabby red living room sofa and scribbled on a pad of paper. They'd been at this for an hour, writing notes in the margins, tapping on their calculators to check an answer, brows furrowed, and virtuously earning their (small) stipend.

It felt good to be earning, but even though Blaine loved his own research, he also felt that school shouldn't only be about working and learning. It should be about learning to make a difference, too, because the universe was all the relationships, too, in the space between two molecules waiting to dance, and he knew that it makes a difference to the molecules - whether they interacted after all or whether they flew away. And you could apply that knowledge to all sorts of problems out there in the bigger world, beyond chemistry, which was chemistry too, after all. He wanted to make his research count, and that was why he was here, though not precisely here, not when a gorgeous, sophisticated, brainy man was lying here in his apartment looking positively delicious in those tight, dark washed jeans.

"You have a nice place," Kurt said, peeking up at him through long brown lashes. "Grad student chic. Ikea and a dash of garage sale? Formulaic with touches of individuality here and there."

"I love that unerring sense of style," he said, and because he was discomfited about his work, about trying to concentrate on earning his stipend and trying not to think about what he was going to do with this degree when he got it and _Kurt_ - "Smart about chemistry and smart about interior design. Hey, can I ask you something?"

"Sure." Kurt laid his pen down and rolled over onto his back. He stared up at Blaine's popcorn ceiling. "What's on your mind?"

"What are you going to _do_ when you get your degree?"

"Hmmmm," Kurt said thoughtfully, but he didn't blink. "More research. Get a PhD, definitely. Have a research lab, like Dr. Petrie. Teach. You?"

"I might stop after this master's, and go work for a company. Really figure out how to make this matter to people and make a difference to society." Blaine's voice warmed. He got excited. "Drug design for less side effects. Materials design for stronger airplanes and tanks. Make a plastic that doesn't try to cut your hand off when you pry something out of the package. Something that affects people."

Kurt turned his head and looked up at Blaine, startled, because the passion in his voice was something you couldn't just dismiss. Kurt had always wanted to just know and be happy with knowing how everything worked. Blaine wanted to use it. Both were equally excellent; both couldn't work well without the other. "I didn't know you felt so strongly about it. I really admire that. I admire that you want chemistry to make people's lives better."

"I do, because that's what science should be doing. Do you think I could do it? Be good at it?"

"Blaine," Kurt said reproachfully, "Of course you are. You're going to be a brilliant chemist. A _fabulous_ chemist. You understand it all and you want to help people with it. We never get that, you know - people think scientists are all just nerds who want to hide in their labs. We don't. We're there because we want to make a difference. Whether it's teaching it or applying it."

"Well - " Blaine now couldn't help himself, so he just did it, he stared directly into those two endless seas of blue - "You understand it all too. Your mind's so sharp and you explain everything to people so well. It's not for nothing you won the teaching award and all the freshmen love you. You care about people too. I - " and it was Blaine's breath that hitched, because he was about to take a stab in the dark and he was almost certain, thought not quite, maybe he did too, maybe he didn't, _oh, Blaine, just say it, just say it_ - "I think… I think, I know, I know you do."

There was a _spark_.

"Dammit," Kurt groaned, and it was sexy, that low growl, and it vibrated and shot straight into the pit of Blaine's stomach to blossom into excitement, and elation, and want. He stretched out his arms, luxuriously, on Blaine's dingy carpet. "Come here. Come here and put that paper down and kiss me until I can't see straight."

There was a jolt when Blaine lowered his lips to Kurt's, and he tilted his head to the right, and the press and the force was - oh my God, so right. Blaine tasted a film of grapes, or maybe that was his mouth and Kurt was tasting him, with generously silky slides of a tongue around and against his teeth and lips that knew precisely what they were doing, and with every slide Blaine was rapidly unraveling into a mess. Kurt mumbled against Blaine's lips too, something like "Can I?", and Blaine nodded against him, and he couldn't babble _yes _because here was Kurt, this beautiful bit of the universe that needed attention and care, even though Kurt was sliding his warm hands down his back and the answer was yes, yes, yes, yes. Blaine's tongue slid into Kurt's mouth too, with no fight, because Kurt's answer was also yes, yes, yes, yes, and their tongues wrestled against each other and the heat and the light were building so far and so high, in the quiver of his hips against Kurt's, and the needy press of Kurt's chest and hands against his.

Kurt's eyes opened, and Blaine's eyes opened too, and they looked at each other, at each other's darkened, dilated pupils, and the heat hovered, mute, in the space between their kiss-swollen lips. Blue irises blended with hazel and the question in Kurt's eyes was answered in Blaine's: yes, yes, yes, yes.

III

"So this is a new thing, huh?" Tina poured in a second load of coffee grounds into the machine and closed the lid, and its familiar bubbly mumble made this bright, fresh morning seem even brighter. _ It's going to be a wonderful day, though work got derailed by, well, that. Not that I minded. It was beautiful. _ "It must've been good, 'cause you two left papers all over the living room floor."

Blaine ran a hand through a thicket of slept-in sticky hair. "Shhhh, he's still asleep. Can you make me some toast, too?"

"It sounded good," Sam said, enviously, as he spread butter on his. "I forgot how loud you get when you do it, and these walls are super thin, dude, just remember that for the future."

"We aren't in high school anymore. You're allowed to say sex. Sexy times. It's about time Blaine got himself some sexy times." Artie said, mouth full of peanut butter.

"It wasn't like that, Artie. It's not a hookup. This is -" Blaine's expression got dreamy - "something that's going to be great. Kurt gets me."

"Whoever said two chemistry nerds can't have great chemistry?" Tina crowed. "Did you even get any work done? Don't forget, rent's due soon."

"We have the rest of today to get it all done. It's not a big deal. I promise we'll get paid."

Sam snickered. "Tina, where'd you put all of our earplugs? We're going to need to know where they are for the future."

"Well, I, for one, am glad Blaine found someone," Tina said pertly. "It's a rare thing when two people meet and fit together and it all just works." She laid the mug on the table, and the steam drifted up to mix with the cooler air drafts in the room.

"When chemicals react," Blaine said between sips of coffee, "it's a thing of beauty. It's like nothing else."

"Hey, you," Kurt said softly, and everyone else swiveled their heads to the doorway for a look at Blaine's gentleman caller. He was faultlessly dressed (how? he looked practically the same as last night) and he leaned against the doorjamb, looking devastatingly good. He looked at Blaine and a smile lingered on his lips. "Can I come in?"

There was a hitch of breath again, but it was a collective one. They darted glances between Blaine and Kurt like they were watching a football game. The warmth shone in Kurt's eyes. Blaine tumbled into his, and the look they gave each other was shy and understanding and deep and beautiful.

It took a second or so of silent staring before Blaine realized that maybe he should stop being a fool and _be a good host, Blaine, because everyone's staring_. He had to be hearty and welcoming, when really, all he wanted to do was bundle Kurt in his lap and put his arms around him and spend a solitary day working with him (or maybe kissing him, too).

They couldn't do that now. Maybe after they got their work done. Maybe.

Blaine blurted out: "Of course! Come in and get some coffee and meet everyone." Kurt scarcely had time to settle himself down in the chair before Tina started up her interrogation, and he started in on his scrambled eggs while they verbally ducked and weaved. It was a good thing that Kurt was so quick-witted, because he wasn't giving Tina an inch, and it made Blaine's heart swell up in his chest as he watched them.

He heard Sam's not so subtle whisper, but it made him smile, too. "Blaine might have a point," Sam hissed to Artie behind his hand, "I guess there's something to this chemicals thing."


End file.
